The DCI Isaac Cook Thriller Series: Books 4 - 6: Murder (The DCI Isaac Cook Thrillers Series Boxset)

by Phillip Strang

  Desperate, his ability to resist the interrogation weakening, he plotted his escape. Big Greg, taller than the average and twice the size of his interrogator, and with his bindings loosened after his constant struggle with them, grabbed the man that had been holding him captive using the last ounce of his strength and placed his hands around the man’s throat. The man gasped for breath, attempted to break free, but there was no one else in the room to help him. Eventually, Big Greg placed him in the chair where he had been restrained not five minutes before and made good his escape, but not before maiming another who stood in his way. His only thought was how to protect his family.

  The knowledge he possessed was too important; his family was not safe, never would be. The only solution was for him to die. This had not been so easy to arrange. The researcher’s death was assumed, once they had found his clothes stacked on a beach and a suicide note posted to his wife, that he had swum out to his death. Not that it prevented them bringing his wife in for interrogation, a situation that he could not control, but it had not lasted long.

  The body of the tramp that he had killed, a man with similar features he had found under a railway bridge, was not hard to deal with: a suitable number of bricks and the man had sunk into the silt on the river bed without a trace. For the first few weeks, the new Big Greg had kept a low profile, allowing his appearance to degenerate, his beard to grow. Once the transformation was complete, he had returned to within a mile of his family and had watched them from a place in a park across from the house that he had shared with them once.

  In time, the hurt of seeing them without him had diminished. However, his daughter maturing, making a fool of herself sometimes, getting drunk too often, sleeping with the wrong man, had been difficult, but she had passed that phase and had matured into someone he was proud to call his daughter. Once, she had given him some money as he sat there watching her. ‘Here you are,’ she had said, as she passed by him with his grandchild in its pushchair. He had wanted to lean over and touch the baby, but he didn’t. He knew what would be the reaction of the mother, his daughter, and it was best for all concerned if she saw him as an old tramp down on his luck.

  ***

  Isaac and the investigation team met as they always did at the Homicide department’s office in Challis Street. As always, the ubiquitous presence of Detective Chief Superintendent Goddard, the demand to wrap up the case as soon as possible, which to Isaac seemed yet again to be rhetoric over reality. So far, they had a body, no motive, and certainly no murderer. The fingerprints, according to Gordon Windsor, the CSE, had revealed nothing of value. It was likely due to the cold evening that whoever had wielded the pole had worn gloves.

  ‘Why Bob Robertson?’ Wendy Gladstone asked.

  ‘Why not?’ DI Larry Hill said. ‘The man must have had enemies, the same as all of us.’

  ‘Did he?’ Isaac asked. He had just had two weeks in Jamaica, his parents had come from there, visiting relatives, soaking up the sun, eating chicken jerk in Boston Bay, jumping off the cliff into the sea at Negril, and chasing a few too many of the dusky maidens, yet a murder investigation gave him more pleasure.

  Most people would have thought him crazy to find joy in dealing with the underbelly of society, and now in this case, the homeless, but for Isaac that was the real world, not the sun-soaked paradise, although his parents’ homeland had more than its fair share of drug-related crime, including the drug mules taking the drugs into the UK. His team had become heavily involved with drugs, mainly heroin, in a previous case, after a dismembered corpse had been pulled out of the canal in Little Venice. However, knowing Bob Robertson’s aversion to drugs and alcohol, Isaac hoped that this time there’d be no drugs involved.

  Isaac could see the beneficial effect Bob Robertson had had on Katrina Ireland when he met her that night, and there had been others who after a spell in prison had ended up in the hostel. Most of those had found jobs locally in Paddington, usually menial.

  ‘What do we know about Bob Robertson? Isaac asked. ‘Apart from the fact that he was a decent man.’

  ‘Nothing,’ Wendy replied.

  ‘I want this wrapped up in the next week,’ DCS Goddard said as he left the office. He had arrived looking for good news to relay to his seniors, not to hear a debate.

  Isaac chose to ignore his departure. ‘Wendy, find out what you can about the victim. Work with Bridget on this one. Larry, focus on Big Greg, find out what you can about him.’

  ‘From what I’ve been able to gather from Katrina Ireland, the man is well known in the area. An anachronism really,’ Larry said.

  ‘Could he have killed Robertson?’ Isaac asked.

  ‘There’s no reason why not, but where’s the motive? A homeless man doesn’t usually commit murder. It doesn’t fit the profile.’

  ‘What profile? As you’ve said, the man does not fit the usual criteria for being homeless. If he’s educated, and not suffering from any addictions, what’s he doing out on the street? He doesn’t fit your homeless profile, does he?’

  ‘Not at all. I’ll check him out. He’s bound to be known to welfare,’ Larry said.

  Chapter 5

  Big Greg knew one thing, he had killed again and for the right reasons. Not that anyone would understand, certainly not the police and definitely not Bob Robertson’s family.

  Yet again he was forced to live with a secret that he had to keep. It was as if he had given himself to martyrdom, knowing full well that there would be no accolade for him, no sainthood bestowed from Rome, no being welcomed back into the bosom of his family.

  He had seen his daughter again walking in the park. It had been dusk, and she had not seen him, not that she ever did, apart from that one time when she had caught him unawares. Even in that short period he had seen the kindness in her heart, in that she had been willing to donate her time, even some money, to an undeserving man. He had been careful to conceal his educated accent, to affect the voice of the street. Her best protection, as for his wife and his grandchild, had been for the world to believe he was dead.

  His daughter was oblivious to what had happened, what would happen if they could use her as a lever to get to him, and they would. Now that Bob Robertson had entered those formulas into Google, the one place where the information would eventually be discovered, then what? Big Greg knew that Robertson’s death had been a reaction to what the inquisitive man had done. Too little, too late, he realised.

  He knew he had to do something now, but what? And as for the secret, they would kill for it, as would he. He knew it was up to him to act.

  ***

  Katrina Ireland had always known that one day her luck would change. With Bob Robertson no longer in control of the hostel, the organisation of the place had fallen on her. He had suggested that she should become more involved once or twice before his death. The rental accommodation that Bob had arranged for her was no longer needed as there was always a place for her to stay at the hostel; not Bob’s bedroom, she wasn’t ready for that yet, but his office was free. Katrina took one of the beds from the main dormitory and gave it a thorough cleaning; it smelt of disinfectant by the time she had finished, but at least she’d not be sharing it with any other, microscopic or otherwise. Not that she wanted to either. Too much time on the street selling herself and then gyrating around a pole had tainted her desire for men, and then there had been Walter, who used to hit her often but he was now doing time in prison for murder.

  She had admired Bob, probably would have been available to him if he had been willing to make an honest woman of her. She had observed that he only drank coffee, black and strong, although he would sometimes linger to take in the whiff of alcohol that was all too common on the street outside the hostel when the queue was forming for the free meal each day.

  Not that she had formed an opinion of what he may have been. To her, the person in front of her was the person she knew, not the person they had been.

  It had been the same with Walter, her last boyfr
iend. He had treated her well at first, knew what she had been, and he had been willing to accept her. With time, his passion for her had subsided, only to be replaced by a loathing of her past history. It had been on one of those occasions, after a particularly severe beating, that she had relapsed and had found the man on a corner not far from the place they rented.

  It was only later when the police knocked on her door that she knew that Walter, in an act of anger, had killed the man who had sold her the heroin. She knew then that he had cared for her in his way, although mitigating circumstances that he had been protecting his girlfriend had counted for little, and he had been convicted of murder.

  For a while, she had visited him in prison every week, but in time the visits had become more infrequent, eventually withering away to none.

  One week after the last visit, one hour after selling herself to the last man, she had found herself in the hostel, with Bob Robertson on the phone organising an appointment for her at a detox centre and a place to stay for the night. He had even given up his bed that night for her and slept in with the vagrants. She never forgot his generosity, his willingness to trust a person who could not trust in return. As she sat in his office, she knew she would never let him down. The hostel had been important to him, it would be to her. She switched on the computer, noting the password written on a scrap of paper.

  The hostel had benefactors, local businessmen who assisted with their time and their money. She needed to contact them, let them know that the hostel was to continue and she would be running it in Bob’s memory.

  Apart from the usual files dealing with income and expenditure, she found the phone numbers of the businessmen that she needed to contact. She called them; they’d be available within the next day or so.

  Now firmly in control, Katrina looked further into the programmes on the office computer. It was clear that Bob had surfed the internet on a regular basis, some of the sites inappropriate, although she ignored those.

  One site interested her, a site that dealt with mathematics, though she didn’t understand what it said. There was a notebook in the top left-hand drawer of the desk that she sat at. She opened it. The formulas on the computer screen and in the notebook showed similarities.

  ***

  Larry Hill made contact with the neighbourhood government job centre; a pleasant woman in her late twenties attended to him. ‘There’s no record of anyone matching that description,’ she had said after Larry had passed on all that he knew about Big Greg. Larry found it strange that a man, clearly noticeable due to his height, could appear and disappear at will. At the hostel they had only known him by a nickname, and even the records Katrina Ireland had shown him confirmed that he always signed in as Big Greg.

  ‘It would help if I had a photo,’ the young lady said. Larry had to admit that he was enjoying his time talking to her. There had been another row at home again, the third in as many days, the subject, the same: his long hours at work, his beer consumption, his expanding girth when he was on a strict wife-enforced diet. Larry knew that she was right on all three counts, but he was a police officer, not a child, and sometimes he needed to let off steam, drink more than he should, and if that included a pub lunch and a few laughs, then so be it. He realised, though, that he should have kept the comments to himself. He had walked out of the house that morning angry, but as usual with him and his wife, their collective anger was short-lived.

  He’d phoned her up after two hours to apologise, and said that he’d be home at a reasonable hour that night. The only problem, he knew too well, was the reasonable time promise. Now he had a man who needed to be found, even if it was only to clear him of the charge of murder: a man that officially did not exist.

  He’d wanted to stay chatting to the young lady, but she was busy, as was he. She had a warm office but where he was heading was out on the street, checking all the haunts where the homeless congregated, it was not.

  ***

  There wasn’t anything that Isaac Cook disliked more than paperwork, and it always snowballed whenever there was a murder. He knew that he was lucky to have Bridget Halloran in the department, a dab hand on the computer, a paperwork administrator par excellence. He was aware that she could take the majority off him in the early stages of a murder enquiry, but once the missing pieces of the jigsaw started to be found, then he’d be taking a lot of it back.

  He’d tried to get someone to assist Bridget, but the woman was stubborn, wanting to be the Mother Hen, not only of him, but of the office, and whereas some had come to help, most had not been suitable anyway. Only one had shown promise, and he’d soon left to take up a better position with Fraud. Not that Isaac could blame him, as the man was more qualified than the job required. And besides, Isaac had to admit that he preferred a tight, cohesive team.

  He knew that with Larry Hill, Wendy Gladstone, and Bridget Halloran the bases would be covered, and none of the three would ever let him down. They were also totally loyal. He still remembered when he had been ejected from his position as the SIO as a result of the escalating murders in the Charlotte Hamilton case and the commissioner’s attempt to bring in his man, Caddick. Though he hadn’t lasted long, Isaac had seen some in the department sucking up to the new man, but his three key members had been professional, polite to him, but never sycophantic, even when their jobs were on the line.

  Isaac knew that if it only remained at the one murder, then he’d manage with the paperwork, but experience told him there was more to the case than the murder of one man.

  Isaac wasn’t sure what would be relevant, but he knew that everyone has skeletons in the cupboard. What if Robertson had been killed because of those skeletons? It was a question worth considering, but first the department needed to find the primary witness and possible suspect, Big Greg.

  Larry had spent further time with Katrina Ireland, Wendy had asked those sleeping rough close to the hostel, and Isaac had been around to the hostel on a few occasions before Robertson’s death, but for some reason he had never seen the man. It was as if he knew the police on sight and made sure to keep away at those times.

  Isaac had to admit it looked suspicious, but it wasn’t often that the homeless were violent. There was the occasional fracas over a sheltered place under a bridge or next to a heating vent, even over a position close to an open fire, but they were invariably committed while under the influence of drink, or nowadays after taking illegal drugs. Even then, they were not injury inflicting, at least, not in the main, although there had been a case a couple of years previously where one of those being pushed had fallen into the river and drowned. Not that anyone ever came forward afterwards, and the homeless encampment had been vacated long before the police arrived on the scene, remarkable given that they typically moved slowly, always protested when being moved on, which was all too often.

  Legislation recently enacted by the local council was disliked by the homeless, those who could understand its ramifications, as well as the protectors of civil liberties, in that the homeless were to be assigned to an area north of their current neighbourhood. There, there would be proper supervision, shower blocks, and medical care if needed. There had been protests, inevitable given the fractious nature of the society, by those who opposed it. Those who supported the move were the wealthy and those whose businesses had been impacted by a tramp sleeping in their doorway at night, leaving their makeshift bed and shopping trolley, even an old cupboard sometimes, for people to walk around.

  Bob Robertson, Isaac knew, was one of those on the side of the disadvantaged, so much so that it seemed a possible motive. The man had not been the most vocal, not even the most influential, in that a member of parliament, a rabble-rousing individual by the name of Gavin Crampton, had taken the cause of the homeless and was using it to his political advantage. Isaac knew Crampton personally, having met him through the previous commissioner of the Met.

  The former commissioner had introduced him to Crampton, unavoidable at a function to celebrate the re
lationship between the police and the general public. Isaac remembered that the MP had been sneering in his condemnation of any improvement and thought that the police were only there to subdue the downtrodden, to inflict their rules on those who needed support. The man was a bigot, Isaac knew, who had been elected in a marginalised constituency, one of the most deprived in the country.

  Crampton, he knew, preached one view, lived another, and he was not to be found with those he publicly cherished, but privately was more likely to be at his house in Bayswater, or out in one or another restaurant around London, not that it stopped his proselytising.

  Bob Robertson had been vocal in his condemnation of the legislation to relocate the homeless, even expressed his views on the radio, and it still remained a viable motive, but apart from that, there seemed no other reason. The building where the hostel was located hardly appeared to be a reason either, in that it was owned by a local businessman, the rent was paid on it, and the real estate market was flat. It could have been some other local residents who felt that their properties were being devalued, but Robertson had improved the area since he had taken over. Isaac remembered the adjoining streets from before, even though it was over ten years ago. Back then, there had been drug pushers who’d run at the sight of a police officer, teens shooting up heroin in alleys, prostitutes hawking their wares in the entrances to seedy buildings. Inside would be a room set up with fairy lights, smelling of cheap perfume, where the man partaking would be treated to ten to fifteen minutes before being hustled out into the street. There had been a disturbance where Isaac and his partner at the time, an older police officer, had had to intervene after the whore’s pimp had wrested a knife out of the hand of a man who had just enjoyed his fifteen minutes’ worth and subsequently found his wallet missing. By the time the two officers had arrived, the man had received a cut on the arm. All three, the whore, the pimp, and the victim, had spent a few hours at the police station before being released.